By No Means a Philosopher

The present author is by no means a philosopher. He has not understood the system, whether there is one, whether it is completed; it is enough for his weak head to ponder what a prodigious head everyone must have these days when everyone has such a prodigious idea. … He writes because to him it is a luxury that is all the more pleasant and apparent the fewer there are who buy and read what he writes. … I throw myself down in deepest submission before every systematic ransacker: “This is not the system; it has not the least thing to do with the system. I invoke everything good for the system and for the Danish shareholders in this omnibus, for it will hardly become a tower. I wish them all, each and every one, success and good fortune.”

–Søren Kierkegaard, Fear and Trembling (Howard V. Hong & Edna H. Hong trans.)